What I Think About When I'm Jogging

Recently I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed in the department of the visual. That is to say, I've been seeing too much stuff and am suffering from overload. I often get this way after I've been showing at Formex. I'm open like a giant eyeball hoovering up information and inspiration, seeing all the new stuff coming out and also reading lots of trend articles in the magazines...and don't even get me started on the relentless eyeball stimulating Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook feeds. Well, it's all too much for me and my eyeballs...we need a break.
It isn't all the eyeballs fault. There is also the inner eye. My inner eye, or imagination department, is in hyper mode, processing all this stuff I've been seeing and running endless design concepts through my mind... It's so bloody noisy in there right now!

Which brings me on to jogging... Normally when I'm jogging I run videos in my imagination and because there is an unlimited production budget on these imaginings, then the end results are quite spectacular and usually keep me occupied for the 30 minutes or so I'm on the treadmill. However, due to my overloaded imagination I thought I would try something different whilst jogging...

Meditating on my inner organs...yep, sounds weird right?

I remember reading, years ago, about a study involving school children. 1 class was told to lay on the floor and imagine that their white blood cells were white knights riding around destroying the bad invaders. The other class was told to lay on the floor and relax but not given any special instruction. Both classes were tested before and after this session and the kids that had imagined the white knights had considerably raised levels of white blood cells. I don't know if this is a true and real thing but I figure that meditating on my inner organs certainly can't hurt and is a blessed relief from all the imaginings. However, being the kind of person I am, there is still a visual element that goes alongside but it is slow and simple.

Firstly I imaging my liver having a good clean, a bit like going through an old fashioned car wash. There are scrubbing brushes washing away fatty business and then soft rags polishing it up to a lovely dark reddy brown shine.

Then we go on the the heart. There is a pink fluffy creature resting its head on my bloody heart and wrapping its furry arms around the heart breathing in love, breathing out bullshit. Cuddling the heart to make it stronger and better at loving.

Next step are the lungs. We have tiny ghostbusters here sucking up green viral invaders.

Then there seems to be workmen in hardhats moving on to the ovaries, womb and fallopian tube department. They wipe the dust off, scratch their heads and say 'um, this area is not getting much use, lets put it on standby' then they give the pipes a bit of a kick and move on.

Next stop kidneys, I don't really know what they do so its just a cursory spit polish there and moving on to the pancreas, which I have even less of an idea about what it does but thankfully my half hour is up by this point and I can stop thinking about my inner organs and get on with the day.

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To counteract the visual overload I'm taking long dog walks in the day time and reading instead of watching  my black mirror with all it's endless temptations and distractions...

I feel good. 

If you are feeling like you have bees in the brain then go talk a deep breath of the outside air, walk in the park, pat a dog, smell interesting things, cuddle and remember we have all these other senses that can be so much fun. I'll leave you with a picture of a couple of my latest cushion designs and the one in the back says exactly that...